They don't make them like they used to!

V. M. Shamuganathan
(1938-2017)

Just a few months short of completing his eight decades of existence, the soul that who infused part of his genetic material into my DNA sighed his last breath in the early hours of Christmas 2017. At a time when most revellers would be in a state of a stuporous daze after a long Eve dinner, he did his last bodily duties and travelled into the horizon to the Otherside. He died in his sleep, finishing his dharmic obligations.

At a time when serenity was the order of the day in the green-lushed tropical port city of Penang, in 1938, he was a born to first-generation Malaysian parents. His cry was greeted with smiles and waves of laughter of thankful parents and relatives.

Growing through the tumultuous years of the Second World War, the sluggish economics years of the post WW2 era, the poverty of joblessness, the street-smart years of the 50s, through the euphoria of the independent Malaya with 15 other siblings, he had seen it all. The whirring sounds of Japanese planes, the meagre diet of tapioca and rationed low-quality light, nature as his playground, having sacrificed education to feed the hungry mouths of the siblings, the courting style of the late 50s in the newly independent former British colony, the marriage, the loss of the first newborn, the elevation of living standards, the fall from grace and the proud moments brought by the three offspring.

November 1958

The opulence brought with it the lifestyle disease of diabetes at the age of 35 years. The undercurrents of the bug reared its ugly head towards the late part of his life in the form of two significant episodes of hemiplegia which resolved miraculously with a minimal residual handicap. He lost two toes on his right foot after a recalcitrant infection burrowed under the fascia. He fought that valiantly. Grimm Reaper must have been working overtime on his case. The morbidity of disease pounced upon him again. Renegade cells on the bladder wall underwent malignant change. He stood stoically against the cancer cells to bowl them over.

He even came out of his recent bout of fight against with the spreading sepsis with flying colours. He defied the odds, at his age, to have a full recovery and healthier than he had been.

October 1986

December 2017

Feeling victorious after thumping all the obstacles that came his way, he must have lied down to sleep in content, albeit the aches and pain of time, in the early mornings of Christmas Day. The hum of the silence of Yuletide morning must have gently rocked him over to the abyss of no return.

Still smiling from the comfort of lying on the lap of Mother Nature, he left his earthly body. Unlike the time when he was born, when he was crying and the others in the world smiling; he lay in a boxed abode with a perpetual grin whilst the others were wailing.

We are intertwined in a cosmic bonding destinies called genes that interact us with affections indestructible with the passage of time. You are one, and I am one, and we are in this together. We are all a piece of existence. The final rites with its symbolic representation of our brittle and subjective existence on earth affirm our karmic and infinite interaction with another.

The inner diety that seeks its soul mates, in this case, father and son, has completed yet another cycle. The recital of ancient slokas and mantra, rendered with Agni as the witness, hope to call upon the all-encompassing Consciousness, to purify and elevate the soul. May his soul protect the living. May the bliss of Knowledge comfort the loved ones and help to live the legacy that he left behind.

(N.B. Thanks AqS for kind words)